William Boyals (Kent Faulcon) is a successful New York lawyer and gay African-American who returns to the life he escaped from to investigate the murder of his gay childhood friend, Kelvin Ayers (Ron Allen). He was lynched in the parking lot outside of a gay night club in rural Louisiana. Boyals is forced to wade through a bog of conspiracy involving a network of local law and a dangerously entrenched subculture. Deputy Mathers (Christopher May) warns him, “Just remember, things ain’t always what they seem.” At the same time, he finds himself having to confront the reasons he left in the first place. He must fight the racism of the local police force and endure the homophobia of his own mother Martha (Cecile M. Johnson).The harder he looks, the deeper he gets, until the veil is pulled back to reveal a quagmire of racism and homophobia that threatens his life. Sheriff Jensey (Sam Jones), who allows his deputies to watch porn videos in the police station, is as homophobic and racist as they come. He is such a despicable villain that seeing Boyals put him in his place during their first meeting at the police station is one of the most enjoyable scenes in the film. Patrons of the Gator, the local gay bar where Kelvin was murdered, refuse to talk, wary of destroying their only safe place to gather. But with the assistance of Kelvin’s brother, Duane (David Raibon), Boyals soon focuses on a likely suspect: Jordan Walker (Shane Woodson), Sheriff Jensey’s redneck nephew. Then the truth is revealed so quickly at the conclusion that you’ll miss some of it if you blink.
Written, directed, and produced by openly bisexual Kyle Schickner, "Strange Fruit" is an entertaining, suspenseful thriller. Some of the scenes are a bit heavy-handed in their melodrama--particularly the opening scene in which Kelvin is murdered. But the film makes up for it with sympathetic characters. Kent Faulcon is solid in the lead role, and David Raibon steals every scene he appears in playing the comic-relief sidekick. The film's title comes from the Billie Holiday song of the same name, derived from the 1937 poem by Abel Meeropol inspired by a photo of the lynching of a black man.
